Beatrice the Acrobatic Weaner

The Comms techs have had the most weaners gathering around their building over the past few weeks and now we know why... They've been training the little guys to do tricks.

The Preparation

This is Beatrice. She has been practising all of about 40 seconds to perform the back-flip in pike position. Let's see if she lands it.

The Dismount

And there she goes, with the unusual method of using her face as the pivot point, rear flippers out as far as they can be stretched. But wait! Her left-hand flipper is tucked underneath, she'll lose a couple of points for technique there.

The Finish

There it is folks, Beatrice has landed her first back-flip. She's a little off to the side but it seems the judges are being lenient. That's an 8/10 - well done that weaner!

Happy Birthday Thylacine!

I'm a little late in putting this post up, actually Thylacine's birthday was all the way back in October. For his birthday I took him on the seal counting expedition and he had a great time along the way.

Thylacine made many new friends and saw some wonderful, strange looking animals. He thought they smelled funny, but would probably be delicious either way.

Thylacine helping with the nightly radio sched (where we call the station and give intentions for the following day)

After the sched Thylacine wanted a hot milo, but he got stuck and had to be rescued.

He figured that since the hunters were using dogs to try and get the rabbits, he would help out by looking down every hole he could.

 

As you can see, the penguins were unperturbed by his presence

But he tried to stalk them regardless.

Daylight

With the increasing daylight, sleeping patterns are getting completely stuffed up at the moment. The sun is rising at around 3.30am and last light doesn't fade until just after 9pm. Usually I'd go to sleep somewhere around midnight to 2am, but now I'm getting some very poor sleep.

I'm glad to have the black plastic taped over my window instead of the curtains that don't work very well.

Regardless of that, on those one or two days where we do get an aurora as the light fades, a spectacular show is put on for us.

Fruit

After 6 months we finally received a shipment of delicious fresh fruit on L'Astrolabe (along with those new people who are fitting in very nicely. Pineapple, rockmelon, grapes, kiwi fruit, bananas and avocados. We were a bit greedy and they were all finished within the week. Sigh.

My mouth is watering just looking at these

They were sooooo good

Other Birds of Macca: Sooty Albatross

Of all the albatross that call Macca home, the Light-Mantled Sooty Albatross is definitely the most beautiful. They nest on the steep slopes and wait for their partner to arrive, fly around in a paired formation and then settle down to business.

These photos are taken from around North Head and I had a lovely little sleep on the side of the hill after watching the birds.

Formation flying

Mutual preening. These two landed very close to me and I had to crawl away so as not to disturb

Sootys playing in the thermals. This was a fantastic view for a nap.

6 Months

Saturday 22nd October marked 6 months of having been on this incredible island. There's another 6 months to go, new people arriving today (but the weather is pretty bad so they'll be on the ship until tomorrow), others leaving and wildlife everywhere.

We are now starting to trip over the weaned seal pups and there's plenty more to turn up.

These weaners seem to think the diesel mechanic's workshop is a well protected area

Elephant Seal Census Day

What religion did we write down for them? Sloth.

This trip was again down to Hurd Point to count elephant seal numbers on the yearly census day: October 15. The area we were doing the census in was from Hurd Point, around the east coast and North to the old hut at South Lusitania Bay (photo to follow). As I was on this trip with the ranger-in-charge (yes, Macquarie Island is a National Park) we ended up doing extra work, such as replacing track markers, on top of the seal count and I followed his lead as to how close I was allowed to get to the wildlife. Essentially, don't approach them but they may approach you.

Ranger Paul counting the ele's with the hut in the background

Interestingly, the only wildlife willing to approach us this time around were the skuas (there's a post on them somewhere earlier in this blog). There was one time while on top of the plateau that they trotted over to us to see if we were about to start dying so that they could, but instead one of them pecked at my walking pole. Then while doing the count on Hurd Point a skua decided that my boot looked tasty. As I've said before, these guys are cheeky bastards and they have no fear. That's enough of that tangent.

So what was the other motivation for doing this particular trip? Well, the area we did the counting in is closed for recreational walking, we have to be working in the area to be allowed in there... which brings up close and personal with the Royal penguins, endemic to Macca.

A small colony next to the Hurd Point hut. They were rather loud all night.

The endemic Royal penguin

Um, that's one whole colony.

A King with his Royal court. Or maybe he's hoping they don't notice that he's different...

New born pup

This one new the photo was being taken

The old South Lusi hut. Made out of an aeroplane engine packing crate.